Why is the Pacific Ocean called the Pacific?

Why is the Pacific Ocean called the Pacific?

In this story: The haunting origin of the peaceful sea ↓ The Unfortunate Islands ↓ The Pacific in Japanese ↓ The first circumnavigation of the globe ↓ Sailing the Strait of Magellan today ↓ Follow the roses to the Pigafetta family house in Vicenza

The haunting origin of the peaceful sea

November 1520. Five months wintering on the Patagonian coast, a mutiny, and weeks of navigating channels between mountains covered in snow. Antonio Pigafetta had lived through all of it. On 28 November, three ships finally emerged from the strait at the southern end of the Americas. Ahead lay open water, unexpectedly calm. [1]

After everything behind them, the view must have felt like a reprieve.

Ferdinand Magellan, the Portuguese commander of the Spanish expedition, named those waters Mar Pacífico, the peaceful sea. The fleet was seeking a western route to the Spice Islands. Between the ships and their destination lay thousands of miles of the largest ocean on Earth. [2]

Pigafetta preserved the explanation in his account:

“In truth it is very pacific, for during that time we did not suffer any storm.” [3]

He also left us the price of a rat.

Half a ducat, when one could be found. By that point, the ship’s biscuit had crumbled into powder alive with worms and fouled by rats. The drinking water was yellow and putrid. The men ate the oxhide used to protect the rigging, soaking it in seawater for four or five days before softening it over embers. Pigafetta recorded that they ate sawdust, too. [3][4]

For three months and twenty days, they went without fresh food. Scurvy swelled their gums over their teeth until some could no longer eat. Throughout this, the ships kept making progress. Pigafetta credited the favourable weather with helping them survive the crossing. [3]

Read his account, and the name becomes deeply unsettling. You can have a fair wind, an untroubled sea and men dying aboard.

The Unfortunate Islands

Twice during the crossing, there was land.

Small islands, with trees and birds, but no inhabitants, according to Pigafetta. After weeks at sea, even those few details suggest the possibility of relief. Yet the water was too deep to find an anchorage, and sharks appeared around the islands. The crews sailed on without the provisions they needed. [3]

They called them the Ysolle Infortunate, the Unfortunate Islands.

Try to trace these remote Pacific islands on a modern map and the story becomes elusive again. Known as San Pablo and Tiburones, they have been associated with several possible locations. Puka Puka, in the Tuamotu Islands of French Polynesia, and Flint Island, in Kiribati, are among the candidates. Their identification remains disputed. [5]

Even now, following this part of Pigafetta’s voyage means accepting a little uncertainty about where, precisely, those exhausted men saw land.

Before the fleet reached Guam on 6 March 1521, those two islands were the only ones it had sighted across the Pacific. [5]

The Pacific in Japanese

On the other side of that ocean, the name has another familiar form: Taiheiyō, 太平洋, the Japanese name for the Pacific.

Its history leads through European maps and their Chinese versions. The Japanese encyclopedia Nipponica points to Matteo Ricci’s world map of 1602, where the waters west of the Strait of Magellan are labelled 寧海, a tranquil sea. Across languages and centuries, the idea behind the name endured. [6]

In Kobe, a different map offers a glimpse of how much remained imagined.

The Kobe City Museum holds Abraham Ortelius’s 1589 map of the Pacific. North of Japan lies an Isla de Plata, an island of silver. Across the bottom stretches a vast supposed southern continent. A ship had already sailed around the world, but a map could still make room for an island of precious metal. [7]

Explore the Pacific map in the Kobe City Museum’s digital collection →

Pigafetta’s account has a Japanese readership, too. Iwanami published it in a collection of voyage narratives in 1965 and in the 2011 volume マゼラン最初の世界一周航海, both recorded in Japan’s National Diet Library catalogue. In June 2025, Nikkei BOOK Plus revisited the crossing through the same details that remain so difficult to forget: the ruined provisions, the leather and the rats. [8][9][4]

The first circumnavigation of the globe

On 6 September 1522, almost two years after emerging from the strait, Pigafetta reached Sanlúcar de Barrameda aboard the Victoria. Eighteen men from the original expedition were aboard. Two days later, the ship reached Seville. [1] Juan Sebastián Elcano had commanded the final voyage home. Magellan had died at Mactan, in the Philippines, in April 1521. Other members of the expedition survived through earlier returns or later release from captivity; the Victoria’s arrival completed the first circumnavigation of the globe. [5]

Pigafetta had joined the expedition out of a desire for experience and adventure. He came from Vicenza, in northern Italy, and had sailed as a volunteer. Among the men who returned, he was the traveller whose account would allow others to imagine the voyage in such uncomfortable detail. [1]

Five centuries later, you can still read about the ocean through the eyes of someone who crossed it hungry.

Sailing the Strait of Magellan today

The passage that opens this story can become part of a journey through Chilean Patagonia.

Punta Arenas, on the Strait of Magellan, is a starting point for boat excursions to Isla Magdalena and Isla Marta, with penguins, sea lions and seabirds along the way. Tierra del Fuego lies across the strait. From the water, the channels and distances of the voyage begin to acquire dimensions that are easy to lose on a page. [10]

Before heading out, there is a ship worth boarding.

Museo Nao Victoria · Punta Arenas

Km 7.5 on the road to Río Seco, Calle Rancho Las Cabras, sitio 2A, Punta Arenas, Chile

The museum’s full size reconstruction of the Victoria is open to visitors. Walking aboard invites a more intimate consideration of the voyage: the space available to the crew, the work of sailing, the months spent living within the same wooden hull.

The collection also includes replicas of HMS Beagle, the schooner Ancud and Shackleton’s James Caird. Together, they make this a particularly absorbing stop before exploring the waters around Punta Arenas. [10][11]

Telephone: +56 9 9640 0772
Email: naovictoriamuseo@gmail.com

Explore boat trips from Punta Arenas →

Check Museo Nao Victoria visitor information →

Follow the roses to the Pigafetta family house in Vicenza

Casa Pigafetta · Il n’est rose sans espine

Contrà Antonio Pigafetta 11, Vicenza, Italy

In Vicenza, a French inscription beside a carved doorway offers an intriguing last word on the voyage: “Il n’est rose sans espine”, there is no rose without a thorn. The words belong to Casa Pigafetta, a Gothic house associated with the traveller’s family, whose coat of arms included three red roses. [3][12]

The motto probably dates from the house’s renovation in 1481, decades before the expedition sailed. Yet after reading Pigafetta’s account, it feels almost uncannily personal. The longing to see the world, the distant islands, the terrible cost of reaching them: all seem to find an echo in those few words carved in stone. [3]

Make this a stop on a walk through Vicenza’s historic centre. Look for the inscription beside the portal, and allow your eye to wander up to the decorated windows. The visit is to the exterior, where the roses and their warning have outlasted generations of travellers. [12]

Find Casa Pigafetta and save it to your Vicenza wishlist →